The Problem with Dreams

Chapter 28 - The Box

Susan emerged into the cottage with Maxwell's wooden box held carefully in her hands. She set it down carefully on the kitchen table and looked at it thoughtfully.

"What is it, Susan?" Greg asked.

"I'm trying to decide if this box really is as familiar to me as it seems," his wife explained.

"Is it?" Greg asked in surprise.

"Yes. Greg ... this box ... I think it's the same one Rosalie was talking about in her letter ... the one Max inherited," Susan told him.

"Why do you think that?" Greg asked as he cocked his head.

"Because ... I think he inherited it from me ... or rather from Penelope," Susan said as she looked up at him.

"This exact box?" Greg asked in surprise.

"Yes," Susan answered.

"Why do you think that?" Greg asked again in disbelief.

Susan rested her finger atop an indented corner of the lid. "Feel this."

Greg put his finger where she indicated.

"This isn't just indented," he realized. "It's embossed."

"Yes. My guess is exposure to water and mud lessened the impression, but you can still feel it," Susan observed. "It's the letter 'H'."

"Surprisingly enough, you can. But Susan why did you have this specific box? And why did you leave it to me?"

"I inherited the box from my mother who inherited it from her mother," Susan told him. "It contained the letters from Harald."

Greg stared at her. "How did you come to have them though?"

"They were passed down mother to daughter through my family ... or rather Penelope's family, until they came to me. I always thought they came to us through Harald's daughter," Susan recalled. "I suspected we were descendants of hers."

"Through Little Marie," Greg realized. "As Harald, I would have written those letters to her."

"Yes. She saved them. I don't know if she had the box first or where it came from, but when I inherited the letters, this box came with them," Susan explained.

Greg stared at the box then at Susan then at the box again.

"Do you remember this? At all?" she wondered.

"No. Not in the slightest. To me it is nothing short of a miracle for this particular box to be here," Greg told her.

"But what about the letters, Greg? Aren't they in it?"

"I don't think so," Greg told her and together they opened the box to reveal a worn and chipped ceramic mug with dried soap at its bottom, a horsehair shaving brush, a mirror, a razor and a stiff old towel.

"He used it as a shaving kit," Susan realized.

"It looks like it," Greg agreed.

"And there's nothing else in here," Susan said in dismay as she looked amongst the items from the box to look beneath them.

"Did you really think Harald's letters might still be there?" Greg wondered.

"I thought they might," Susan told him.

Greg frowned slightly. "Are you absolutely certain that this is the same box?"

"I think it is, Greg. This box feels ... familiar ... like one of our dreams," Susan struggled to explain.